The Passing of 
Mary Baker Eddy 



Farnsworth 



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Book . a 3 w . 

Copyright N°._ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE PASSING OF MARY BAKER EDDY 



THE PASSING OF 
MARY BAKER EDDY 



BY 
EDWARD C. FARNSWORTH 



PORTLAND, MAINE 

SMITH & SALE, PRINTERS 

1911 



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COPYRIGHT BY 
EDWARD C. FARNSWORTH 

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>CLA2<Sr>127 



THE PASSING OF MARY BAKER EDDY 



THE PASSING OF MARY 
BAKER EDDY 

T VOICING her sincere belief, Mrs. 
* Eddy once declared that already 
the child was born who never would 
surfer physical death. This was in the 
early days of Christian Science when 
the faithful were few indeed. Long 
afterward her student hearer expressed 
to the present writer the profound and 
lasting impression his teacher's proph- 
esy had made in him. 

His opinion has ever been that Mrs. 
Eddy referred not to herself, but, in 
fact, to some disciple of a time, more 
enlightened and not far distant, when 
the truths of Christian Science, active 
in the hearts of the majority of man- 
kind, would create conditions favorable 
to this full and final demonstration. 

As for the teacher, she now has 
passed even as the king or the beggar 
in every age and country of the world. 
Length of days has been hers, a not 



THE PASSING OF 

unusual compensation of Nature to 
women whose early and middle life has 
been marked by ill health, or chronic 
invalidism. She has passed as kind 
Nature would have us all pass, not 
painfully through the breaking of wheel, 
spring, or balance, but rather by the 
gradual wearing out and cessation of 
the whole machinery of the body. 

Whether or not Mrs. Eddy in her 
foretelling referred to herself is debata- 
ble. Certainly very many advanced 
Scientists looked for the unusual to 
mark the earthly end of their revered 
leader. Questioners, not in the sacred 
circle of believers, have met the know- 
ing look and evasive reply intended to 
arouse rather than satisfy curiosity, 
while Mrs. Eddy's own attitude of late 
years has, at least in appearance, been 
one of preparation. 

Like the mystics of all lands and 
times who have left the arena for the 
cell, the city for the forest, or the 
mountain cave, she retires to a solitude 
penetrated only by the proven few, 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

those necessary to herself, and to her 
supervision of Christian Science work. 
Her followers rear in the metropolis a 
costly temple, but she goes not there 
to worship. There is the "mother's 
room" with its costly appointments, 
a room which she never occupies. 
The great body of believers may not 
approach too near her retreat, much 
less may they enter on any pretext. 
In her closed carriage she threads the 
city ways as one apart from the multi- 
tude. In short she, as far as may be, 
bars herself from the shafts of those 
twin devils of her creed, malicious 
animal magnetism and ignorant animal 
magnetism. 

Could it have been arranged, she 
would have become as inaccessible as 
the Dalai-Lama, who in the Himalayas 
protected himself from the inharmoni- 
ous vibrations of unbelief. An almost 
mythical being was he until English 
arms, penetrating the mountain fast- 
ness of Tibet, arrived at the holy and 
forbidden city of Lhasa. 



THE PASSING OF 

Behind her four walls Mrs. Eddy 
was held either dead or imbecile by 
thousands in the realms of untruth, 
and so to them she was unless they 
accepted the life, the truth, she offered 
in her various written revelations. 
Foolish ones and blind, they did not 
comprehend that in the chosen calm of 
her Concord or Newton home she, as 
far as possible, would overcome those 
gigantic and most formidable of earthly 
errors, physical body, and physical 
death. 

The faithful held that in her success, 
Christian Science would be' wholly 
vindicated ; but should she fail, and 
that was a possibility, then it were 
wiser and better that nothing be said 
but that the age is as yet too densely 
ignorant for Truth to come into shin- 
ing. However, Christian Scientists are 
not all of them wise, or even tactful ; 
some one will talk when silence would 
be golden. 

Now, at the time to be non-com- 
mittal, a certain Mrs. Stetson has her 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

hopes and beliefs, and the courage, if 
not the prudence, to speak with no 
uncertain voice. So, because a once 
prominent and influential, but now 
deposed member of the Mother Church 
of Boston, she is pounced upon ; she 
must endure the bark and bite of the 
vigilant watchdog of the sheepfold. 

Let us see what authority "in Sci- 
ence' 7 Mrs. Stetson has for saying that 
Mother Eddy, in her true body, will 
yet appear for the edification of the 
disciples, and the teaching of the mul- 
titude. 

Science and Health avers that man, 
the everlasting child and thought of 
God, is above and outside of material 
body. Material man came into this 
material world not by the will of God, 
nor yet by his permission, for in fact 
God knows nothing of one who is actu- 
ally non-existent, a mere appearance 
due to mortal mind which, at his con- 
ception, cunningly counterfeited the 
real man, the eternal thought of eter- 
nal Mind. 



THE PASSING OF 

Jesus himself was a counterfeit, 
unique and marvelous, but still a 
counterfeit. In the mortal mind of 
Mary arose a semblance of the Christ 
Principle, "Life, Truth and Love for- 
ever in the bosom of the Father." By 
a supreme effort of mortal mind, Mary 
became pregnant and, in due course, 
brought forth a child the like of which 
shall never again appear, for, in the 
resurrection of the Master, the Christ 
Principle dissipated forever those erro- 
neous things, the body and mind of 
Jesus. 

While Jesus is sui generis, there 
have been other prophets of the Truth, 
but no prophet of the whole Truth 
appeared until the advent of Mrs. 
Eddy. She is the highest and most 
wonderful counterfeit of the heavenly 
child of God that this world has known, 
and therefore she is second only to the 
lowly Nazarene. In an age of iron, 
Moses taught the stern justice of an 
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. 
To his prepared disciples, and follow- 



8 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

ers to be, Jesus taught God's loving 
fatherhood to Jew and Gentile alike. 
In a more receptive age, our own, Mrs. 
Eddy taught that crowning truth, the 
sweet motherhood of Deity ; the Fath- 
er-Mother God, the eternal and only 
Mind ; in other words, she taught 
Divine Science. 

The Christian Scriptures narrate the 
triumph of Jesus over death and the 
grave, and Science and Health with 
Key to the Scriptures foretells the 
ultimate triumph of the truth-enlight- 
ened over death, the last great illu- 
sion. Mrs. Stetson holds that Mrs. 
Eddy, as the supreme benefactor of 
the race, and the way-shower to our 
age, and all future ages, has spiritual- 
ized herself enough to be able now, or 
in the near future, to demonstrate to 
the eye of this world the unreality of 
death, and the reality of spiritual body 
and being. This is the head and front 
of her offending. 

That Mrs. Stetson considers Mrs. 
Eddy a " second Christ" is unbeliev- 



THE PASSING OF 

able since the merest tyro in Christian 
Science knows the sharp distinction 
drawn in Science and Health between 
Jesus and the Christ. Neither could 
she consider her teacher a second Jesus 
for reasons already given. Every thor- 
ough student of Science knows the 
real status of Mrs. Eddy ; she is the J 
great Mother, the new and better Mary ; ■ 
better because she revealed to the 
world the incorporeal Christ Principle, 
whereas Mary of old gave but Jesus 
whose life was a striving toward the 
Reality, the Christ, that he attained 
only through sorrow, suffering and 
mortal death, all of them unrealities 
which he in his mortal flesh could not 
wholly overcome because of the un- 
belief of the world at large, and the 
lack of perfect faith among his nearest 
disciples. 

The same age-old lack of perfect 
faith Mrs. Stetson finds in the near 
disciples of one of whom she holds 
that being dead to falsity she yet 
lives. 



10 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

Mrs. Stetson reproaches those in 
power whom she believes capable of 
removing from the church manual the 
name " Pastor emeritus," those who 
would thus affirm belief in the real 
passing of one whom they should know 
to be of all women the most alive and 
active in ever-present Truth. Mrs. 
Stetson announces the end of the gos- 
pel age, and the entrance of humanity 
upon the millennial age. 

In our western world it is but little 
known that the astrologers of the 
ancient East, understanding the pro- 
cession of the equinoxes, in other 
words, understanding the twenty-five 
thousand year cycle during which the 
sun passes through the twelve houses 
of the Zodiac, held that the sun's 
advent in any house meant the connect- 
ing of the great lines by which cosmic 
energy, or Cosmic Will, was conveyed 
to this world, a process which, in these 
days of wireless telegraphy, we can 
better understand than could our pred- 
ecessors of a generation ago. 



ii 



THE PASSING OF 

Furthermore, the experts in the an- 
cient arcane science held that the 
coming of the sun into any zodiacal 
house was necessarily marked by a 
grand spiritual awakening ; the unusual 
descent of spiritual force making for 
conditions necessary to the birth of a 
great spiritual leader of the race. Two 
thousand years ago the sun entered the 
house of Pisces, whose sign is that 
of the fishes, the secret sign of early 
Christianity, one beyond all doubt 
known to the Magi who journeyed to 
the cradle of Jesus. In 1897, or there- 
abouts, the sun entered the house of 
Aquarius, whose sign is that of the 
water-bearer which, in the ancient 
arcane science, signified a more plente- 
ous outpouring of Truth. 

Be all this as it may, one cannot 
ignore the tendencies of the times. 
Never, since the first century of our 
era, have men been looking, as now 
they look, for the second coming of 
Jesus the Christ. The Second Advent, 
and the Millennial Dawn societies, 



12 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

together with many among the Theos- 
ophists, who base their beliefs on 
sources well outside of the Jewish and 
Christian Scriptures, would fix a date 
in the near future, while multitudes in 
our evangelical churches hold that the 
days of Daniel are well-nigh fulfilled. 

Never, ere this, was there a time when 
so many false prophets, so many spu- 
rious Elijahs, warning the faithful to 
flee from the wrath to come, waxed 
great and rich on the substance of their 
dupes. We laugh or grieve at these 
deluded ones caught up and tossed 
upon the great wave of psychism, the 
wave of hypnotic suggestion, now 
sweeping upon man's mental shores ; 
but behind this sweeping is a greater 
wave, from the fathomless ocean of 
Truth, driving before it all lesser 
waves. These shall spill themselves, 
and their wreckage, upon the border 
sands, leaving to triumphant and over- 
flowing Truth her rightful possession. 

In prophesying publicly the reap- 
pearance of Mrs. Eddy, Mrs. Stetson 



13 



THE PASSING OF 

antagonizes the powers that be ; not 
however, that they deem the founder of 
their faith unworthy such unique dis- 
tinction, but rather because, lacking 
the fearless optimism of Mrs. Stetson, 
they will not publicly countenance a 
prediction which, if proved unfounded, 
would draw upon themselves and their 
church the ridicule of the sceptic and 
the scoffer. 

Among Scientists no question of Mrs. 
Eddy's unworth is ever tolerated, and 
yet she contrasts strangely with him 
who had not where to lay his head. 
Born into a materialistic age, with 
what both she and hers deem a divinely 
inspired message against materialism 
upon her tongue and pen, she escapes 
not a certain taint of the time. Of all 
persons, in or out of the fold, she is 
one of the last to ignore the material 
dollar. Such a weight of material gold 
as was legally hers, should somewhat 
burden the wings of one who would soar 
free from the delusions and pitfalls of 
this treacherous and sordid world, and 



14 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

then would return, as a wholly immate- 
rial being, to convince every doubting 
Thomas, and confound the unbelieving 
in all lands. 

Perhaps Mrs. Stetson has, in her 
make up, an excess of faith and hope ; 
but what are faith and hope ? To our 
way of thinking these are indispensable 
soul substances ; charity is another 
indispensable. Evidently Mrs. Stetson 
deems the board of directors of the 
Mother Church deficient in these three. 
During every age of the world men 
have questioned the unseen in wonder 
that it hides from mortal vision. 
" Show us and we will believe," they 
say, not realizing that, to develop the 
soul, both faith and hope must be exer- 
cised. The musician, the artist, or the 
actor, will say of his pupil, " Better 
an excess of temperament than no 
temperament ; the one may be mod- 
ified, the other is well-nigh hopeless." 
God pity the poor and shrivelled 
soul devoid of faith and hope ! Yes, 
God pity it ! Omnipotence cannot 



15 



THE PASSING OF 

make of that soul what some other 
shall become. 

In his open letter against Mrs. Stet- 
son and her resurrection theory, Alfred 
Farlow says, "The statement that the 
Christian Science board of directors 
has received a protest from New York 
against the placing of guards at Mrs. 
Eddy's tomb is absolutely false." 
" There was no mysticism, or super- 
naturalism in the minds of those who 
placed the guards at the entrance of 
Mrs. Eddy's tomb. It was done for 
the usual reasons." 

Certainly no one with the faith and 
hope of Mrs. Stetson would object 
to the placing of guards who would 
prove invaluable witnesses should the 
so-called supernatural occur as on a 
memorable Easter morning nineteen 
centuries ago. Mr. Farlow avers that 
the guards were there for the usual 
reasons ; but had the unusual, the mar- 
velous, occurred, would it have been in 
human nature to admit their placing 
for an ordinary purpose ? We doubt 



16 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

it ; and we doubt that Christian Scien- 
tists would have admitted it, for the 
fact is patent that, in comparison with 
the members of other Christian denom- 
inations, they retain in their make up 
quite as much of the old Adam, and 
the old Eve, and this notwithstanding 
that <4 chemicalization " is supposedly 
active in their mortal minds and bodies. 
Mrs. Stetson much fears that by tam- 
pering with the manual, the authorities 
of the Mother Church will obscure the 
pure Truth as revealed by Mrs. Eddy. 
It may be so ; but Mrs. Stetson ought 
to know that the real danger is to be 
found in the writings of the Mother 
herself. What is the cornerstone of 
Christian Science if not the allness of 
Mind and the nothingness of matter, 
as affirmed in the "Scientific statement 
of Being?" Between these two oppo- 
sites Science and Health admits of no 
compromise. Mind and matter, Good 
and evil, All and nothing i In battle 
array they stand, the conqueror and 
the thing to be conquered, and no over- 



17 



THE PASSING OF 

tures of peace are allowable, or even 
possible. 

In his Stetson article, Mr. Farlow, 
whose duty and desire is to quote 
correctly from his oracle, prints these 
words of Mrs. Eddy: "It is the teach- 
ing of Christian Science that in our 
present immature condition we have 
more or less of a misconception of crea- 
tion, which will improve and eventually 
disappear as we advance spiritually, 
and that eventually we will be able to 
see all things as God sees them in all 
their spirituality and perfection." 

Reading the above, one can imagine 
matter advancing from its position of 
nothingness and drawing near, and 
eventually meeting Mind in a mutual 
hand-clasp. If Christian Scientists 
were something more ; if metaphysi- 
cians as well, then would they see that 
the doctrines above quoted are those 
of ordinary Idealism, accepted by thou- 
sands since the days of Plato ; in fact, 
the mighty Grecian taught these very 
things, but his was a mind too logical 



18 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

to see in the densest matter a mere 
nothing. 

To Mrs. Eddy a lump of clay is 
nothing, while a rose is " the smile of 
God ; " but surely the rose was rooted 
and nourished in the soil, and, having 
lived its life, perhaps on the bosom of 
Mrs. Eddy herself, it is cast out to 
mingle with the dust. The clay is 
nothing, the rose is something, says 
Mrs. Eddy. Plato would have argued 
that nothing will always be nothing, 
that the clay is a lesser something than 
is the rose, for otherwise the clay could 
not have contributed to its delicate, 
lovely and fragrant tissues. Now, if 
we agree with Platonic Idealism that 
the clay is something, in fact the Truth 
seen through the veil of illusion, we 
disagree with the fundamental concept 
of Christian Science for we have as- 
serted that Mind is not all. 

Although in the construction of Mrs. 
Eddy's peculiar philosophy it was nec- 
essary that matter should be nothing, 
an absolute zero, still, when she looked 



19 



THE PASSING OF 

upon the appealing beauties of the 
material world, her better sense belied 
her theories, and the result was an 
ingenious attempt to overcome the 
palpable contradiction. 

In this attempt the clay may be lik- 
ened to a darkened room, the rose to 
that room when somewhat of sunlight 
has entered. The clay is dead appear- 
ance, nothing, until the sunlight of 
Truth entering displaces it, and the 
result is an approach to final Truth, in 
other words it is Truth manifest as a 
rose. 

Although this explanation satisfies 
the Christian Scientist, it yet presents 
to the critical investigator certain insur- 
mountable difficulties. How came the 
room to be dark ? If not dark, whence 
and why the appearance of darkness ? 
If there be no truth in clay, how then 
can misconception in regard to clay 
exist in a universe possessed and filled 
by omnipotent, omnipresent Truth ? 

The logical reasoner will at once 
perceive the difficulty, and supply the 



20 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

necessary reality and power of oppos- 
ing" ignorance. . These questions are in 
fact old ones in philosophy, questions 
which logic and reason have never 
otherwise been able to answer. How- 
ever, Christian Scientists are as undis- 
turbed by those mortal things reason 
and logic as is Mrs. Eddy who, to 
vindicate Truth, must prove to non- 
existing mortal mind that Truth alone 
exists. History shows that the prog- 
ress of enlightening Truth has been 
painfully slow, like that of a sword 
driven through solid oak ; but if matter 
were nothing, Truth should flash upon 
the world swifter than sunlight piercing 
the inter-planetary ether ; swifter than 
electricity belting the globe ; swifter 
than the thought of man winging to the 
outmost star. 

Again, Mrs. Eddy's definition of 
matter, " nothing claiming to be some- 
thing," is the most absurd and self- 
contradictory to be found in any pseudo 
philosophy. Still this Eddy aphorism 
is a sweet morsel of wisdom on the 



21 



THE PASSING OF 

tongue of the Scientist who, in no 
instance, asks himself by what miracle 
4 'nothing" is enabled to make its 
claim. 

According to Mrs. Stetson, Jesus 
accomplished a stupendous task in re- 
versing the testimony of mortal mind, 
and Mrs. Eddy wrestled mightily to 
overcome and rise superior to false 
belief of mind in matter. But Mrs. 
Stetson knows Mrs. Eddy's failure, at 
least for the time being, for, despite 
her wrestling, she succumbed to the 
error of sickness and bodily death. 
From this it appears that the nothing 
of mortal mind, like that of matter, 
somehow refuses to down. 

Returning to our simile of the clay 
and the rose ; Mrs. Eddy calls the one 
nothing because to her mean, and 
unsightly ; the other is something be- 
cause it appeals to her aesthetic sense. 
Now who shall decide in the matter of 
beauty ? With his microscope the man 
of science detects what he deems beau- 
tiful in the clay. The sculptor and the 



22 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

painter, praising the lines and contours 
of the human body, argue that physical 
man is the consummation of God's 
handiwork on this material plane, and 
the anatomist and the physiologist 
agree with them, but Mrs. Eddy, in 
this instance true to her theories, will 
insist that physical body is nothing, 
absolute zero, and base her system of 
healing on that theory. 

All this, and also the real source of 
Christian Science philosophy in the old 
Eleatic fallacy of Parmenides, has been 
discussed at length in the present writer's 
book, The Sophistries of Christian Science ', 
to be found in most public libraries. 

And now let us return to the matter 
which prompted these few pages, to 
wit, the passing of Mrs. Eddy, and the 
prophesy of her reappearance. 

The Mosaic writings declare the 
body of physical man to be dust, and, 
in Christian Science, Adam, " error, " 
was formed from the dust of the 
ground, and to dust, nothingness, 
shall he return. 



23 



THE PASSING OF 

In Mrs. Eddy's teaching, the body 
of the good man or woman is not all 
error, as will be understood from our 
simile of the clay and the rose, and 
that of the darkened and the lighted 
room. The real child or thought of 
God, of which mortal man is a counter- 
feit, dwells in a mind body glorious to 
the opened eye, hence the stories of 
angelic appearances found in every 
great religion. This true being of man 
shines into and dissipates the material 
elements of physical man in proportion 
to his openness to the heavenly influx. 
In the case of Jesus, this process con- 
tinued through his ministry and cruci- 
fixion, and was fully accomplished in 
the tomb. In the case of Mrs. Eddy, 
it was a consummation devoutly wished 
by every Scientist well versed in the 
philosophy of his cult. 

Mrs. Stetson is a time-honored and 
thorough student of Christian Science, 
a disciple once very near and dear to 
her leader, moreover, she is a woman 
whose native abilities place her well 



24 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

toward the front of the two million or 
more adherents to her peculiar creed ; 
and she, knowing the whole philosophy 
and trend of Christian Science, finds 
warrant for her publicly avowed belief 
that Mrs. Eddy will yet reappear for 
the benefit of humanity. We have 
undertaken to show the consistency of 
her position, but, at the same time, the 
interests of real Truth have constrained 
us to indicate and indite the chief falla- 
cies on which she bases her utterances, 
fallacies which she holds in common 
with Mr. Farlow and every other mem- 
ber in good standing in the Mother 
Church. 

If our logic has proved to the reader 
the false premise of Christian Science, 
and the consequent absurdity of any 
resurrection theory deduced from it, he 
will doubtless ask why Mrs. Eddy, a 
woman of decided native ability, has 
so deluded herself, and her intelligent 
following, with her theory of spirit and 
matter. 

To this query our answer would be 



25 



THE PASSING OF 

that the history of Philosophy is the 
history of many such enigmas. The 
illogical premises of Xenophanes, Par- 
menides, and their successors among 
the Eleatics, were undiscovered by 
themselves, and unremedied by their 
cleverest disciples ; it required a Plato 
to disprove them. Nor did the great 
Idealist succeed in constructing a 
wholly satisfactory scheme of God, 
Man, and Nature. 

Now while, in the history of Philoso- 
phy, scheme has superseded scheme, 
she nevertheless approaches ultimate 
Truth by a system of exclusion. Truth 
is comparable to a diamond priceless 
indeed, but hidden in some one of 
many rooms. Seeking in certain of 
these, Philosophy, time and again, has 
come upon a stone pure at first sight, 
but defective under test. Now she 
knows where the treasure is not, and 
also she knows the very room where 
long ago she cast aside the spurious 
gem of Christian Science. 

Mrs. Eddy was a re-discoverer in the 



26 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

domain of speculative thought. Un- 
acquainted with the past of Philosophy, 
she in the twentieth century reverted to 
opinions held four hundred years before 
the Christian Era. This being so, she 
was poorly equipped for one suppos- 
edly in the van of human progress ; 
she was little fitted to be the chosen 
usherer in of the new age to which Mrs. 
Stetson and her public are looking. 
These enthusiasts must, we fear, await 
the bringer of a larger, saner revelation 
than is found in the pages of Science 
and Health, or any other message of 
the new Mary. 

The future historian of the rise and 
fall of fads and cults will find interest- 
ing material in the annals of the Eddy 
movement ; and the people of that day, 
among whom may be many under the 
spell of some new delusion, will point 
to the costly and enduring temples 
originally dedicated to Christian Sci- 
ence worship, and much they will mar- 
vel at the belief in the allness of 
"Good," and the nothingness of evil; 



27 



THE PASSING OF 

a belief then extinct as shall be that of 
Mother Ann Lee who, like Mother 
Eddy, taught that from her revealings 
would result the cessation of human 
generation upon the earth. 

What then, in all fairness, can be 
said for Christian Science ? Surely 
this, that amidst our modern material 
environments, material interests, and 
material philosophies, it cries aloud, 
" Prepare ye the ways of Idealism. " 
And of Idealism Emerson said, "We 
learn first to play with it academically, 
as the magnet was once a toy. Then 
we see in the heyday of youth and 
poetry that it may be true, that it is 
true in gleams and fragments. Then 
its countenance waxes stern and grand, 
and we see that it must be true." 

Idealism, to those who understand 
it, is one that, unlike the God or Good 
of Christian Science, knows the actual- 
ity of evil. Stripped of the senti- 
mentality wherewith Mrs. Eddy has 
invested it, Idealism may seem too 
stern to such as realize not that in 



28 



MARY BAKER EDDY 

their finality Love and Justice are one, 
that otherwise either would annihilate 
the other. 

In these days of crumbling founda- 
tions and tottering edifices of outworn 
dogma, the pseudo Idealism of Mrs. 
Eddy, Mrs. Stetson, and the rest of 
the following, is a provisional structure 
which, if judiciously remodelled, would 
bear some semblance to the etherial 
and high-towering temple of Truth yet 
reared by mankind amidst these poor, 
earthly clods of matter. 



THE LAW OF LOVE AND SACRIFICE 



Although our brief examination of Christian 
Science proves it a shell almost empty; one cast 
aside long centuries ago, we should not there- 
fore pronounce all early philosophy so lacking in 
vital nourishment. Before Xenophanes, before 
Pythagoras, before the beginnings of Greek met- 
aphysical thought, the thinkers of India were 
formulating a system known as the Vedanta 
Philosophy which Professor Max Miiller called 
" the most sublime of all philosophies." 

Surely a generous estimate ! Still the estimate 
of one who should know. To support the emi- 
nent scholar's opinion, and to contrast the pro- 
fundity of Vedanta with the shallowness of 
Christian Science, let us choose for examination 
a single teaching, one of many, for Vedanta is 
a three-fold system embracing in its perview a 
unified trinity of philosophy, religion, and science. 



THE LAW OF LOVE AND 
SACRIFICE 

A S love is the highest, mightiest 
^** good, so can it be the basest, 
most destructive evil. In the total of 
goods and evils, selfless love and self- 
ish love are the positive and negative 
poles. The one is comprehensive and 
creative, the other by itself is restrictive 
and barren, yet in an evolving universe 
they are indispensable opposites. 

This duality of love inheres in the 
constitution of things ; a force making 
for life, and a force making for death, 
it exists potentially in every atom, and 
is the source of balm and poison in 
every kingdom of nature. The law of 
love originated in the First Cause, and, 
as far as human mind can fathom, that 
law is for all, from the First Cause 
down to the humblest life where dwells 
the immanent God. 

Because of its origin and universal- 
ity, the law of love is the law of laws, 



33 



THE LAW OF 

the one law of which all others are 
derivitives. Formulated by Divine 
Wisdom, the law of selfless love is that 
of sacrifice ; sacrifice which in giving 
receives. But for the law of selfless 
love, the Creative Word had not stirred 
the darkness of the Unmanifested, and 
man, the lesser word, had never been 
born. 

In the scheme of creation unfolded 
in the sacred books of ancient India, 
the alternating objectivity and subject- 
ivity of the universe, in other words its 
days and nights, are due to the opera- 
tion of the law of love and sacrifice. 

At the beginning of the cosmic night, 
the All-Father in selfless love had 
called His children to Himself. From 
every sphere had they come as, one by 
one, the fires of suns and systems were 
quenched by the age-long in-breathing 
of the " Great Breath," in other words, 
by the gradual withdrawing of the vital 
essence of physical flame, and physical 
life. And now the negative pole of 
love, to wit, Nature and her progeny, 



34 



LOVE AND SACRIFICE 

had come nigh its high Opposite. 
Actual oneness was about to be, and 
the All-Father's Love would, in that 
oneness, become self-love, that against 
which his Wisdom had decreed. 

Then began the primeval sacrifice, 
the sacrifice of the Logos ; the renunci- 
ation and separation, the out-breathing 
of the Great Breath, its vital flame 
informing the physical atoms, and 
again bringing into manifestation the 
material universe. So were the worlds 
born of love and sacrifice ; so at that 
birth began the operation of the wise 
and good law whereby the Highest is 
perfecting, through man and collective 
nature, the negative pole of his Being. 

In this procedure the authors of 
Vedanta found the secret of wisest, 
sanest living. Loving sacrifice is the 
one means of growth ordained by 
Divine Wisdom, hence the altars of 
primitive peoples have flamed with 
offerings acceptable until the nations 
had come into the essential meaning of 
sacrifice. It was selfless love that 



35 



THE LAW OF 

gathered and condensed the nebule, 
fixed the planets in their rounds, set 
the earth in axial motion that every- 
where life might feel the sun, and made 
that sun to shine alike on the just and 
the unjust. Selfless love is the urge 
of man's progress and expansion, and, 
necessarily, his selfish love is the cause 
of dwarfing and dying. 

Love of self in God and man cannot 
and should not be annihilated because 
pure love is all-inclusive ; moreover, a 
certain self-love, as check to the un- 
limited giving of selfless love, is essen- 
tial to the preservation of being, body, 
and individuality on any plane of 
existence. That individuality is not 
destroyed, but enormously enlarged by 
man's union with the Universal Self, is 
the belief of the keenest interpreters of 
Vedanta. Since the duality of love 
must exist in God, the problem of man 
and collective nature is to find the nice 
equipoise enabling love of self to be an 
attribute of Perfect Being. 

Ages on ages must be devoted to the 



36 



LOVE AND SACRIFICE 

mystery, and, after all, the perfect bal- 
ance is known only to Divine Wisdom, 
and exists in Deity alone. Jesus in the 
garden was confronted with a false 
balance of selfish and selfless love, but, 
putting down the moment that threat- 
ened his mission, he endured to the end. 
Prince Gautama, heir to a kingdom, 
must renounce the syren luxury of a 
palace, and ought else pandering to 
self-love, and wander forth in long and 
diligent heart-search for such equilib- 
rium as he at last attained under the 
sacred tree. 

In the subjective semi-cycle sym- 
bolized as the indrawing of the Great 
Breath, and indicated by the death 
of worlds and the extinction of suns, 
the negative pole of Universal Being 
approaches the Positive Pole because 
in this arc of progress the fruits of 
perfect love and sacrifice, fruits that 
differ with every universe, must en- 
rich the Positive Pole, whereas all 
else of lesser worth must, in that 
Divine Presence, be assimilated by the 



37 



THE LAW OF 

entities producing it. From all this 
it appears that the universe is as neces- 
sary to God as He to the universe. 

Evidently the law of giving and 
receiving is a just and unescapable one 
rewarding the selfless and the selfish 
according to their deserts. It is a law 
making luminous the words, " Cast thy 
bread upon the waters for thou shalt 
find it after many days." Moreover, 
this law requires that the bread again 
be given, but it provides that every 
return is in larger measure until at last 
there comes to the giver the world itself 
which then he gives freely as once he 
gave the cup of cold water. Mean- 
while his ever-expanding ability to help 
others is conserved by a necessary por- 
tion of self-love. 

Unescapable as is the law of giving 
and receiving, it becomes, for Compas- 
sion's sake, somewhat flexible in oper- 
ation. The ordinary man is but clay 
in the scales of its justice. Grown to 
be like silver or gold, he is more 
exactly weighed ; afterward, like the 



38 



LOVE AND SACRIFICE 

diamond he must submit to the most 
delicate balance that, finding himself 
lacking, he may strive toward a more 
perfect selflessness. 

On the other hand, he who acquires 
for self, holds not his getting for the 
law of efflux in its own time tears from 
him, or his, the close-hugged gains of 
selfishness. "Riches certainly make 
themselves wings ; they fly away/' and 
in this instance the flying away leaves 
not blessing, but a sense of absolute 
loss since man can truly call his own 
only what accrues to him as reward of 
worthy personal effort ; all else in 
departing leaves no assurance of its 
return. 

The equilibrium of selfless love and 
love of self never was in primal Adam, 
nor could it be in any angel or arch- 
angel created as such, for that equilib- 
rium is attainable only through the 
free exercise of a lesser than Divine 
Will, in fact a will which, according to 
Vedanta, is the negative pole of Divine 
Will. For the balancing of this pair 



39 



THE LAW OF 

of opposites, as for the balancing of 
the opposites of love, the experiences 
of our material world are indispen- 
sable. The struggle in Gethsemane 
ended in the balancing of will where- 
fore Jesus said, " thy will be done." 

Vedanta teaches that a love-balanced 
life, a life in complete accord with the 
law of selfless love, would make of man 
a sympathetic and potent co-worker 
with Nature's law-directed forces ; such 
a one would be in tune with, and there- 
fore possess and use wisely, the Master's 
mystic and magic word analogous to 
the equilibrating Word of the Divine 
Architect of the Universe, and symbol- 
ized in Masonry by the lost word of 
Hiram Abiff architect of the Temple. 

Of such a master it could be said 
that not only does he heal the sick, 
raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and 
cast out devils ; but that even the 
winds and the sea obey him. 

On the other hand, if selfish love 
prompt man's thoughts and deeds, 
then, by a change by polarity, self-love 



40 



LOVE AND SACRIFICE 

becoming his tyrant, his artful devil, 
leads him on to where, stripped of 
real power, he is crushed to bestial 
or demonic regions which, though not 
eternally dark and forsaken of prog- 
ress, are untouched by the wave of this 
world's evolution. 

The attainment of pure love is so 
necessary to man that, of his grandest 
material achievements, should be said 
that they benefit only as far as contrib- 
uting to the equilibrium of selfless 
love, and love of self. The law of love 
has inspired the strivings of saints, 
and the teachings of sages, throughout 
the centuries; shining forth from every 
golden rule and precept, it is, as Jesus 
said, the law and the prophets. 

Vedanta teaches that mind develops 
because of love which, as desire, was 
the source of primal, universal motion, 
and, in its selfless or selfish aspect, is 
ever the urge of all activity in God, 
man, and nature. Mind, like love and 
will, is dual. Divine Mind, and what 
Christian Science ignores as " mortal 



4i 



THE LAW OF 

mind," are necessary opposites, the 
Positive and negative poles of Univer- 
sal Mind. 

According to Vedanta, true wisdom, 
desire of the wise, is unattainable by- 
one whose love is centred in self, 
for that wisdom comes only through 
enlargement of sympathy, in other 
words, through harmonious vibration 
with the object of knowledge. Seizing 
this thought, Richard Wagner in his 
sacred music drama makes of Parsifal, 
the simple youth, a wise deliverer 
enlightened through pity. 

Not as the man of mercantile affairs 
is he wise, nor yet like the statesman, 
or the general, or the widely-governing 
king. His is a wisdom undervalued 
by these, but nevertheless the priceless 
wisdom of God, indispensable when 
love and sacrifice shall have become 
the law of human life. 

We have sounded a few characteris- 
tic chords in the symphony of Vedanta ; 
a symphony where instruments of treble 
range are effectively offset by those of 



42 



LOVE AND SACRIFICE 

graver tone ; a symphony essentially 
major, but with many a contrasting 
minor woven through its vast and 
complex structure ; a symphony of 
balanced parts, of broad and full and 
flowing harmony contrasting with the 
unrelieved top-heaviness of Christian 
Science. 



THE PURPOSE OF THE HIGHER DRAMA 



THE PURPOSE OF THE 
HIGHER DRAMA 

A CTION and speech are man's pri- 
^** mal expression of the mind within 
him. Action he shares with the hum- 
blest life, but speech well proves him 
first of all creatures. Action is funda- 
mental and universal in nature, for the 
world revolves, and the very rocks are 
worn and shifted by the elements, and 
the mountains are lifted up or else 
bowed down in those mighty convul- 
sions which, through aeons, have shaken 
and rent the globe. 

Art is the expression of both nature 
and man, hence in all art action must 
needs be. The poem deficient in move- 
ment is convicted of fatal dullness. 
The picture or the statue seeming not 
to breathe and move, is a wooden fail- 
ure, a falsification of life. Through 
gesture, facial expression, and inflec- 
tion of voice, in short through action, 
the orator moves and convinces, where- 
as the mere speaker leaves us cold and 
unconverted. 



47 



THE PURPOSE OF 

The drama is an assembly of orators, 
or, what is equivalent, an assembly of 
actors who, accentuating vocal and 
bodily eloquence by means of costume 
and scenic effect, make for an art the 
most stirring and convincing of any ; 
an art which, because capable of por- 
traying the vast whole of human life, 
is immeasurably potent to entertain 
and instruct, or else to debase the 
hearer and the actor as well. 

Necessarily the drama is of remote 
origin as every coming together, for 
war or the festivities of peace, was in 
some sort a drama with the comic, or 
the tragic, at least discernible. It is 
evident that a thing so comprehensive 
and sensitive as is the drama, must 
reflect the dominating thoughts and 
tendencies of any age and nation pro- 
ducing it, and, while Plato, influenced 
by the Homeric poems, would have 
made the tragic drama an imitation 
of the hero who, like Ulysses, both 
achieves and suffers, still the dominat- 
ing idea of the ancient world was 



4 8 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

largely religious. Always, in grove or 
temple, the ceremonial of worship was 
effectively dramatic, while in Athens 
the drama itself became, on occasions, 
a religious performance. The essen- 
tially religious Eleusinian Mysteries, 
telling the travail of Persephone, the 
human soul, that — because of the fruits 
of her past — was drawn periodically 
into rebirth, were set forth symboli- 
cally by ^Eschylus the great tragic poet 
of Attica, and, afterward, in the early 
centuries of our era, began the custom 
of enacting in the sanctuary, on festival 
days, such vital themes of the Church 
as the nativity and resurrection of 
Christ. These themes, together with 
the Bible miracles, and also the Passion 
and the Cross, were subjects of dra- 
matic endeavor throughout the Middle 
Ages. The Passion and the Cross are 
to-day enacted in that abode of linger- 
ing medievalism the Bavarian town of 
Oberammergau, while the dramatic yet 
survives in the Greek, the Roman Cath- 
olic, and the Anglican communion. 



49 



THE PURPOSE OF 

Lofty and reverent in the time of 
Pericles, ribald in the time of Julius 
Caesar, licentious in that of the English 
restoration, and extravagant and senti- 
mental in the early days of Schiller, the 
drama, as already said, reflects the rul- 
ing thought and tendency of the age, 
and let it be added that, in each rep- 
resentation, the aroused listener stim- 
ulates the performer so that by this 
action and reaction the power of the 
play, as an instrument of good or evil or 
mere entertainment, is vastly enhanced. 

What then is the legitimate end of 
the drama ? Evidently to elevate and 
also to entertain, for, without relaxa- 
tion, even the most determined grow 
weary and fail. In the drama let the 
hideousness of evil be in no way glossed 
over ; never excused and made light of, 
for, however much evil may seemingly 
prosper, Justice sits enthroned, and 
her perpetual adjustments and readjust- 
ments have saved the world from itself, 
have lifted it upward throughout the 
ages, and still shall lift it up. 



5o 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

In the stage of to-day are the possi- 
bilities of a message vital as that of 
the prophets and the priests of old ; a 
message not to any chosen people, 
narrowed to a province, but to world- 
wide universal man. While frivolity 
and greed and uncharitableness are 
now apparent, and in fact everywhere 
uppermost, yet, beneath these, and 
ever struggling surfaceward, is the 
dominant tendency of a new era where- 
in shall be realized a broader, saner, 
sweeter brotherhood than Earth had 
aforetime known. In the stimulation 
of this tendency the stage of to-day 
will find its noblest work, for what is 
nobler than the bringing about of con- 
ditions which alone solve the problems 
of a century setting such mutual inter- 
ests as capital and labor in unbrotherly 
opposition ? A century fostering those 
refinements of barbaric cruelty, the 
various warfares of civilization, war- 
fares begotten of original brute self- 
ishness in man ; warfares for whose 
quelling the would-be helper of his 



5i 



THE PURPOSE OF 

race has long waited, and still must 
wait. 

But the actor, and the actress, the 
despised and almost ostracised of ear- 
lier days ! These must indeed rise to 
the new possibilities awaiting them; 
possibilities unsurpassed by those of 
any other profession ; possibilities de- 
manding that their own private lives, 
like that of the preacher, be consistent 
with every public appeal, for, other- 
wise, somewhat of the bad messenger, 
however much he dissemble, mixes 
with and adulterates his high message. 

In the goodly prime of Greece, the 
actor realized the dignity and possibil- 
ities of his calling, and his itinerancies 
of a later day familiarized the ancient 
world with those masterly products of 
dramatic genius, the tragedies and 
comedies descending to us from that 
culminating age. But in the prime of 
Rome, a prime of strength rather than 
of culture, the actor, unlike his Greek 
predecessor, was usually a slave by 
birth, and so it surprises not that dur- 



52 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

ing the decadence of Rome, actors, as 
a class, became so dissolute that, in 
vigorous reaction from an outworn and 
sensual paganism to an austere ascet- 
icism, the Christian Church denied to 
these her every sacrament. Although 
the drama was yet to be her auxiliary, 
and, in the hands of Lope de Vega and 
his many predecessors, it was destined 
to enact the lives of the saints and the 
life of the Master himself, still the 
church then condemned it in toto. On 
exhibitions good and bad she looked 
askance ; all were alike an offense to one 
that had seen the Roman amphitheatre 
red with the blood of her martyrs. 

The average modern theatre-goer will 
not tolerate such buffoonery and licen- 
tiousness as marked the play in the 
days of tottering Rome, when, to sur- 
vive the rivalry of the Circus and the 
Amphitheatre, it pandered to the mob ; 
nor will he countenance such stage 
morals as obtained in the century for 
which Ariosto and Macchiavelli com- 
posed their comedies ; neither would he 



53 



THE PURPOSE OF 

listen, at least at public performance, 
to the unexpurgated text of some of the 
earlier English playwrights. 

As for the dramatic profession of 
to-day, noble men and women, capable 
of reviving the best histrionic art, are 
by no means rare in the rank and file 
of the stage, and many such, until com- 
pelled by sheer necessity, have held 
themselves apart from every pandering 
to crude, unevolved popular taste. 

To reach the savage, the drama 
should be that of aboriginal war, the 
drama of wanton murder or bloody 
revenge, the drama wherein his own 
tribe, or, better still, his own kin, are 
the murderers and revengers, in fact 
the drama of the uneliminated brute 
beast that rends and devours. 

For the semi-civilized, the drama 
should resound with the shouts of bat- 
tling men and also with the shrieks of 
captive women, lawful prize of lust and 
victory. The merely civilized listener 
will rejoice in the iron strength of arms, 
and the proud bearing of the feudal 



54 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

lord, from his high-builded walls and 
towers, ruling by might alone the obse- 
quious or grovelling many. 

Having outgrown mere blood and 
tyranny, the average theatre-goer now 
turns to the melodramatic, while for 
him the liaison of the risque play 
supersedes the forced yielding of old. 
Some remnant of the savage, and every 
subsequent evolution, urges him to wit- 
ness the evolved representation of all 
that once delighted his ancestors. 

In our present state of human prog- 
ress, few have wholly outgrown man's 
ancient tendencies, so, to obtain a hear- 
ing, the drama must deal with much 
that eventually will be but historic. 
While recognizing this, the world's 
greatest dramatists have scorned those 
distortions of life which the mirror, 
held to nature, fails to reflect ; also 
they have scorned a sensationalism 
making impossible plot and exaggerat- 
ed incident the ends of their art. For 
these playwrights, plot and incident 
were only means to one end, namely, 



55 



THE PURPOSE OF 

the unfolding of their sagest philoso- 
phy, and the presentation, through 
humor and pathos, of their keenest, 
most helpful criticism of life. 

Of this order were the memorable 
ones who largely share in the glory of 
Pericles' day, and such were they who 

"fill 
The spacious times of great Elizabeth 
With sounds that echo still.' 9 

Fortunate it is that early in the Eliza- 
bethan reign the invective of a narrow 
but well-meaning Puritanism failed to 
overthrow the stage, for, otherwise, we 
had inherited no English drama worthy 
of the name, and therefore no Shakes- 
peare we value outside of the sonnets, 
and the erotic poems, the first heirs of 
his invention. 

In such drama as most faithfully 
holds the mirror to nature, individual- 
ization of character accompanies devel- 
opment of plot. This drama epitomises 
life, and is therefore educational. The 
Shakespearian plays are in this cate- 



56 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

gory, as also the drama of "Faust," of 
which masterpiece one should know 
that the first part, that culminating in 
the tragedy of Margaret, is, as Richard 
Wagner remarks, inadequate and mis- 
leading without the second part. 

Wagner's position is made clear by 
two illustrations from Bible history. 
The life of David, measured by the 
episode denounced by the prophet 
Nathan, is that of an adulterer and 
murderer. But, before judgment is 
passed, one must see the life as a 
whole, that of a mighty individual man 
strong in good, and strong, too strong, 
in evil, once having yielded to its 
seductions. So with Solomon the great 
king. Did he not once turn to what 
proved but vanity and vexation of 
spirit ? Notwithstanding which, he 
towers the wisest in Israel, the one 
choosing wisdom as of all gifts the 
most fitting from God to man. 

As for Faust, he likewise is cast in 
no common mould ; although a philos- 
opher, he yields to the sensuous until 



57 



THE PURPOSE OF 

by sin dragged nigh to the pit ; but 
Hell cannot seize and submerge him, 
and eventually he rises to a life of 
renunciation and faithful service to 
mankind. Therefore the achievement 
of this faulty man, who conquered his 
failings, fulfills the requirements of the 
higher drama. 

Many well-intentioned people to-day 
wholly condemn the stage, but, while 
their attitude is demonstrably unfair, 
their mistakes are more of the head 
than of the heart. These have seen 
and considered that which the right- 
minded everywhere lament, to wit, the 
dark side, the reverse of an otherwise 
fair picture. Under reformed condi- 
tions these would become friends rather 
than remain enemies of the theatre. 

How shall be brought about that de- 
sideratum, the betterment of the stage ? 
A question easy in the answering, but 
difficult almost to discouragement in 
the realization. 

In China the production of an im- 
moral play is an offence for which the 



58 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

author in liable under the penal code. 
Yet this is not all, for, after death, he 
is supposed to suffer until his play is 
no longer performed ; notwithstanding 
which, the law in the interest of higher 
drama is practically inoperative in that 
country. Now what is true of China 
would obtain everywhere, the chief 
traits of human nature varying but 
little the world over. 

It is evident that nothing less than 
radical change in profitable demand 
will bring stable results. To begin 
with, let those who crave the better 
and the best, ask for, and, more im- 
portant still, lend to them their liberal 
patronage. 

And now a word to those who stand 
aloof, drawing their garments close 
around them. Since the beginnings 
of civilization, the stage has been with 
mankind, and so it will endure even to 
the very end, for it expresses, as no 
other vehicle, the mental, emotional, 
and physical activities of man ; more- 
over, in its best estate, notably in the 



59 



THE PURPOSE OF 

days of classic Greece, and in Eliza- 
bethan times, it voiced the spiritual 
aspirations of the human soul. 

Certainly in Egypt and India, and 
even in China, the drama in earliest 
historic times, was wholly a vehicle 
of religious teaching. When, later, it 
widened to a representation of contem- 
porary life, great and worthy things 
were still expected of the stage as the 
following question and answer well 
show. "What are those qualities 
which the virtuous, the wise, the ven- 
erable, the learned, and the Brahmin 
require in a drama ? " "Profound 
exposition of the various passions, 
pleasing interchange of mutual affec- 
tion, betterment of character, delicate 
expression of desire, a surprising story, 
and elegant language.' ' In this an- 
swer is condensed everything that any 
age or people should demand of the 
drama, while the "betterment of char- 
acter" is the real end of religious and 
ethical endeavor. 

Among those who shun and denounce 



60 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

the theatre, are many music lovers, 
indiscriminate patrons of French and 
Italian opera ; and what are certain of 
these operas if not mere sensual love 
intrigues made more insidiously harm- 
ful by the cantabile of the singer, and 
all the witchery of sweet sounds ? 
From the composing of these things 
the good Mendelssohn wholly turned 
away, for he had seen possibilities far 
better in such lofty themes as "St. 
Paul" and "Elijah." 

What now is the oratorio of "Eli- 
jah" but a sacred opera shorn of out- 
ward, physical action, but vital with 
the inner action of the drama ? And 
what is any opera but a drama set to 
music ? No one doubts the spiritual 
uplift in Mendelssohn's masterpiece, 
or in Wagner's sacred opera "Parsi- 
fal:" then why not accord to the 
wholesome drama the good lesson it 
would inculcate ? 

The very problem from which Men- 
delssohn turned, was afterward faced 
by one well-fitted to solve it, and Wag- 



61 



THE PURPOSE OF 

ner evolved a complex art creation to 
which he gave the name of " Music- 
drama." In this German regeneration, 
Wagner, as far as consistent with the 
requirements of modern musical and 
dramatic art, reverted to the classical 
models of Greece, as did the leaders of 
the Italian Renaissance. In charac- 
terizing those mythological beings, the 
gods and heroes of the Norse Saga, 
beings whose movements were largely- 
controlled by foredooming fate, Wag- 
ner aspired to the types bequeathed 
by iEschylus and Sophocles, but, else- 
where, following the lead of Euripides, 
he moulded the freer and more appeal- 
ing human with its virtues and defects, 
its passions and heart interests. In 
all this we have Wagner's ideal of the 
higher drama. 

Now as for those who stand aloof 
from the drama, their non-support of 
the harmless and even the helpful, 
notably such plays as " The Christian, " 
and "The Servant in the House,' ' 
counts always for that against which 



62 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

war should be waged as when Jeremy 
Collier published his effective pam- 
phlet, "A short view of the Immorality 
and Profaneness of the English Stage." 
Therefore let this class join hands with 
the patrons of the higher drama, mak- 
ing common cause with them so that 
united effort arrests and turns the tide 
of contamination at present well-nigh 
inundating the modern stage. Thus 
shall the drama become what in times 
bygone it meant to Attica, and Athens, 
and all of ancient Greece ; to wit, a 
national educator and preacher, and, 
withal, an incomparable entertainer 
and renewer of the overwrought. 

Tragedy and comedy, and all the 
spectacle that moves between such 
widely-sundered extremes ! Always, 
from the patriarchal times of Job, it 
has been that in the crowning years 
of the world's most memorable ages, 
imaginative genius has given to the 
drama its highest, noblest themes, 
while into these, as fitting matrix, the 
weightiest wisdom and the brightest 



63 



THE PURPOSE OF 

wit have poured that so the higher 
drama might worthily endure, abiding 
with men forever. 

The past and present scarcity of 
meritorious plays is no surprising mat- 
ter. Inevitably it has been thus, and 
so always will it continue because play- 
wrights of the better sort are them- 
selves rare indeed, much rarer than 
poets and novelists of equal rank. The 
ambitious dramatic endeavors of Ten- 
nyson himself, have added little to 
his prestige, while the best labors of 
Browning and Swinburne have resulted 
in what is known as closet drama. 

For the achieving of anything so 
objective as the stageable and actable 
drama, the modern poet is usually too 
subjective, for, as Byron unwittingly 
proved, his own personality, coloring 
all that it contacts, is the center around 
which his peopled world revolves. The 
novelist makes fairly useful to himself 
the glasses fitted to eyes other than his 
own, but the whole of stagecraft, no 
inconsiderable art, he must add to his 



6 4 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

literary equipment would he venture 
into the sacred realms of Thespius. 

The tricks of the stage, and the 
resources of the scene-shifter, in other 
words, the sensational and the spec- 
tacular, are the chief reliance of the 
popular playwright, first, because to 
master these requires of him only clev- 
erness and practical experience, and, 
second, because the public responds to 
cleverness more easily and understand- 
ing^ than to genius. 

Since the popular playwright is inca- 
pable of producing worthy and finished 
lines, he argues speciously that shap- 
ing and polishing is labor lost on the 
average audience, experience proving 
that always it sets the crude ore above 
the refined and fashioned gold. 

In Shakespeare's day, popular educa- 
tion was undreamed of, and culture was 
confined to a narrow circle. Neverthe- 
less, it cannot be denied that the busy 
actor and author and, withal, the thrifty 
shareholder in the historic Globe 
Theatre, held his hearers without de- 



65 



THE PURPOSE OF 

scending to the lures of to-day. While 
necessarily he yielded somewhat to the 
demands of the pit, still his real mis- 
sion, as author, was to deliver to 
succeeding generations of ever-widen- 
ing enlightenment and culture, a mes- 
sage at once lofty and of universal 
use ; a message unsurpassed by any 
other outside the pages of Holy Writ. 

The Shakespearian drama is not 
now a profitable money venture, and, 
notwithstanding the labors of Garrick, 
it has to no extent been so since the 
days of the Globe Theatre. In Eliz- 
abethan times, the great multitude 
favored the playhouse and its exhibi- 
tions, for the ceremonies of both Church 
and State had prepared them for these. 
During and before the reign of James 
the First, the Puritans, in vigorous 
reaction, were turning more and more 
from the rites of established worship, 
and the show of state occasions, to a 
simplicity both austere and bare. The 
pomps and pageantries indicated if not 
realized on the stage of that time, sug- 



66 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

gested to the Dissenters the hollowness 
they hated in cathedral and court alike. 

Since those embittered days, an in- 
fluential minority has steadily antagon- 
ized the stage ; for to this minority it 
was identified with pleasure, and pleas- 
ure with mere worldliness, and that 
mere worldliness and the soul's gain 
could together be dispensed across the 
footlights was of course absurd. 

That larger brotherhood which, as 
already said, lies beneath the surface 
of our modern discontent, is already 
manifesting in what may be called the 
key-note of to-day, universal toleration ; 
and of this long needed blessing, the 
stage must necessarily receive its due. 
As result, that w r hich the promoters 
and patrons of really elevating drama 
have well-nigh dispaired of, will yet be 
wholly accomplished. 

Social, political and ethical condi- 
tions and problems, inseparable from 
our changed and changing modern days, 
are prolific sources of drama, much of 
which, while not of the highest literary 



6 7 



THE HIGHER DRAMA 

merit, is wholesome and worthy of en- 
couraging support. 

We have that new invention the 
psychological drama, counterpart of the 
psychological novel which, almost de- 
void of plot and incident, is the work 
of the analyzing essayist who mistakes 
his calling. Such drama will not here 
be estimated for it little concerns the 
great public, and, necessarily, its 
patrons are in the main a critical cult 
of students and thinkers. 

Addressing those with whom is the 
balance of power, those who, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, control the 
situation, let us ask their careful and 
enlightened consideration of this ques- 
tion. Shall we who, realizing the 
faults and follies of the stage, have 
altogether shunned it, now lend hand 
and voice to the purging of that which, 
from the nature and needs of mankind, 
must flourish always in our very midst ? 



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